Dr Liam Rooney
Research Associate
Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
Prize And Awards
- Best Talk Prize
- Recipient
- 11/2023
- Scottish Microscopist of the Year
- Recipient
- 10/2023
- StrathWide Funding Award
- Recipient
- 8/2023
- Best Talk Prize - SENSR-BIS Conference 2023
- Recipient
- 6/2023
- SULSA ECR Development Award
- Recipient
- 2/2023
- Royal Microscopical Society Summer Studentship Grant 2022
- Recipient
- 4/2022
Publications
- Printing, characterising, and assessing transparent 3D printed lenses for optical imaging
- Rooney Liam M, Christopher Jay, Watson Ben, Susir Kumar Yash, Copeland Laura, Walker Lewis D, Foylan Shannan, Amos William B, Bauer Ralf, McConnell Gail
- Advanced Materials Technologies (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202400043
- Low-cost 3D printed lenses for brightfield and fluorescence microscopy
- Christopher Jay, Rooney Liam M, Donnachie Mark, Uttamchandani Deepak, McConnell Gail, Bauer Ralf
- Biomedical Optics Express Vol 15, pp. 2224-2237 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1364/BOE.514653
- Construction and characterisation of a structured, tuneable, and transparent 3D culture platform for soil bacteria
- Rooney Liam M, Dupuy Lionel X, Hoskisson Paul A, McConnell Gail
- Microbiology Vol 170 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001429
- Remote-refocus microscopy using a MEMS piston micromirror
- Christopher Jay, Rooney Liam, Uttamchandani Deepak, Bauer Ralf
- Microscience Microscopy Congress 2023 (2023)
- Using 3D printed optics for fluorescence microscopy
- Christopher Jay, Rooney Liam, McConnell Gail, Bauer Ralf
- Microscience Microscopy Congress 2023 (2023)
- A simple image processing pipeline to sharpen topology maps in multi-wavelength interference microscopy
- Tinning Peter W, Schniete Jana K, Scrimgeour Ross, Kölln Lisa S, Rooney Liam M, Bushell Trevor J, McConnell Gail
- Optics Letters Vol 48, pp. 1092-1095 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.478402
Research Interests
Dr Rooney is a Postdoctoral Researcher based at the Strathclyde Institute for Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. His research interests lie in the development and application of advanced optical imaging methods to the field of microbiology.
Dr Rooney is involved in several ongoing research projects. He is currently funded by the Leverhulme Trust to research new manufacturing and characterisation methods for optical imaging, to democratise access to high-performance microscopy and create open hardware imaging solutions. He is also conducting ongoing research to understand the role of biofilm transport channels which he first identified during his PhD, developing 3D microbial culture platforms, and developing new imaging techniques for the life sciences.
Aside from his research, Dr Rooney is heavily involved in various Learned Societies. He is the current Chair of the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) Early Career Committee, a member of the RMS Life Sciences Committee, and the RMS Council. Dr Rooney is also a Microbiology Society Champion and a Forging Futures Ambassador for the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA). He was awarded the Junior Medal for Microbiology by the Microbiology Society for his PhD research investigating biofilm structure using novel imaging methods and, more recently, the 2023 SULSA Early Career Development Award which funds an ongoing collaboration with researchers at Columbia University, New York, USA.
Professional Activities
- ELMI
- Organiser
- 4/6/2024
- A New Channel for Biofilm Treatment: Exploring the Potential of Biofilm Transport Channels for Drug Delivery
- Speaker
- 4/2024
- Sensing Oxygen Concentrations in Biofilms: A route towards targeted biofilm therapies
- Speaker
- 4/11/2023
- Faculty of Science Breaking Barriers 2023
- Contributor
- 24/10/2023
- Mesoscopic Microbiology: Visualising bacteria across spatial scales
- Speaker
- 10/8/2023
- Investigating the fractal nature of channels within E. coli biofilms with altered cell phenotype
- Contributor
- 25/7/2023
Projects
- High-precision chemical mapping in biofilm transport channels to inform better therapies
- Rooney, Liam (Principal Investigator) Dietrich, Lars (Co-investigator)
- Biofilms are microbial communities linked to over 80% of infections and exhibit remarkable antimicrobial tolerance. We have developed advanced microscopy methods to visualise multi-millimetre-scale biofilms with sub-cellular resolution, providing unique cross-scale 3D overviews. We identified networks of nutrient transport channels and aim to exploit them using targeted biofilm therapeutics. However, we must understand the channel chemical microenvironment to inform new treatments. We present a dual-pronged approach to quantify the oxygen concentration throughout biofilm channel networks using high-resolution oxygen profiling and fluorescent oxygen-nanosensor imaging. These insights will inform the design of a new class of antimicrobial therapeutics to tackle recalcitrant biofilm infections.
- 13-Jan-2023 - 13-Jan-2024
- Surface characterisation of 3D printed lenses for microscopy
- Rooney, Liam (Principal Investigator)
- We developed a method to 3D print transparent lenses for use in optical instrumentation, with the aim of democratising access to bespoke optics for prototyping and use in low-resource settings. We required a method to accurately calculate the surface curvature, smoothness, and quality in order to determine if our 3D-printed lenses were a viable alternative to their expensive glass counterparts.
We developed, optimised, and applied a super-resolution optical interference method to image the surface of our printed lenses and quantify their curvature and surface quality. This method was implemented with a variety of printed optical elements to assure the quality of and reproducibility of 3D printed optics. - 13-Jan-2022 - 01-Jan-2022
- Optical methods to measure antibiotic production by Streptomycetes
- Rooney, Liam (Principal Investigator) Schniete, Jana Katharina (Principal Investigator)
- The genus of bacteria, Streptomyces, produces around 70% of clinically relevant antibiotics in use today. They evolved the ability to secrete these chemical weapons into their local environment to ward off competing microbes and to signal over extended distances. However, understanding and quantifying the secretion of antibiotics directly from the cells into their environment is challenging.
We developed a method based on combining routine confocal fluorescence imaging with standing wave fluorescence microscopy and interference reflection microscopy to measure the volume of extracellular matrix secreted by live streptomycetes in situ. Our method was able to accurately measure the 3D volume of matrix around individual hyphae thanks to a five-fold axial resolution improvement compared to confocal microscopy alone and has translational applications for the study of extracellular matrix and antibiotic production with minimal perturbation to the bacterial cells. - 07-Jan-2018 - 10-Jan-2018
Contact
Dr
Liam
Rooney
Research Associate
Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
Email: liam.rooney@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted